


Portention

by Jenry_Morgan



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fever, Hurt/Comfort, Mortinez, Romantic Angst, Tropes, jenry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 03:10:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6139312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenry_Morgan/pseuds/Jenry_Morgan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"How rarely we truly pursue what we desire most. We waste one turn after another, selfishly believing that we should wait for a better moment, a greater opportunity to express our deepest feelings, not realizing, that everything we're surrounded by can be surrendered in an instant. What is done or said cannot be taken back, but how much more extraordinary and painful a loss is, when the very things we intended to act upon, are never given light at all. " ~Henry Morgan</p>
            </blockquote>





	Portention

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all, 
> 
> I'm so excited to be a part of this trope ficathon and reading everyone else's fantastic work. Here's my own dive into the always fascinating world of tropes. Some Jenry of course is inevitable...maybe more like a lot. The idea came to me in a snap and I took off with it, frankly having no idea where it was going to end up. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading and for all the hard work put in to making another great Forever ficathon happen!
> 
> Comments and kudos are always loved!

“God, it’s been ages since I’ve been somewhere like this,” Jo laughed, her striking features lit up by the flickering candles of the table we stood beside. From buildings towering above, New York’s city lights escaped into the darkness and were caught by the thick clouds, teasing lonely droplets of rain and patching the brick walkway. A party of people paraded around us, women dolled up in fancy dresses with husbands and lovers hanging off their arm. They talked animatedly, but their conversations were a blur of voices, as though they were hardly there at all. “We had a big celebration for all the new posts at the precinct when I joined-on the same day I got my gun and badge,” Jo shared. “I remember Hanson threatened a round of karaoke; Sean had to drag him away from the mic.” Jo glanced down at the ground at the thought of her husband, her chestnut hair falling over her face.

“It must have been nice,” I said softly. My hand flexed as I resisted the impulse to brush back her hair and run my fingers against her face.

“What a night,” she tossed her head back and looked at me with sparkling eyes. From the intensity of her stare, I wasn’t entirely sure if she was still talking about her own party.

Feeling a little warm, despite the cold, night breeze, I lightly pulled on the already unbuttoned collar of my dark crimson shirt. She didn’t know it, but this was nothing more unlike any night I’d shared in someone’s company. The years I spent toiling over spot lit, cold bodies, cut me away from everything I once felt. I lost myself to a constant search, to the desire of any explanation of my eternal curse. Seeking change, I charted out every death in my own secret laboratory, listening to my son Abraham holler down at me from the antique’s shop upstairs. Tonight, I relished the sharp waves of comfort and warmth in Jo’s company, yet I forced myself to keep away from the lingering fear that pulled me, like a weight, out of her presence.

In the intimate courtyard party, the commotion only faded faster, as thicker raindrops fell in perfect rhythm to the odd music in the background. Its melody was familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d heard it before.

“Do you think we’ll beat the rain?” Jo asked suddenly with a coy expression.

I accepted the challenge. “We can try.” Setting down the wine glass she’d been twirling by the stem, Jo crossed the courtyard just ahead of me. She walked with confidence, not as a detective, but just like the woman who’d found her own strength once more. She glanced at me over her shoulder, her figure perfectly framed in a low-neck, black sweater and slim pants. Faces swirled past us, not one familiar, until we slipped entirely into silence and to a tall gate, keeping back uninvited visitors like us from the private party. Jo stretched an arm through the iron bars and pushed the latch from the outside, catching it and swinging open the gate. The sleeve of her sweater slid up on her arm a little, showing, in the low light, a black, inked set of dots on her wrist. In all our time, I'd never noticed their perfect design, but said nothing of the symbol to Jo now. Not bothering to lock the gate again, she simply reached for my hand as we stepped out into the street. Her boldness caught me by surprise, but the warmth of her close touch was oddly familiar.  
There had never been a night like this.

“Henry, Henry,” she whispered my name. In all this evening, her voice was the only thing I heard most clearly. A police car flashed past us, sirens blowing, as it sent my heart racing and I squeezed Jo's hand for reassurance that she was still at my side. Sensing my worry, she only held it tighter. “I wonder if they realized we crashed their party,” Jo thought aloud of the host's generosity in sparing us of explanation, while we strayed on their backyard promenade, clueless entirely to even the occasion they were so lavishly celebrating. She had completely indulged in the atmosphere, stealing plates of food and toasting champagne with strangers. I never ate a bite, but she didn't question why as she ate it for me.

“I hardly think anyone noticed we were there at all,” I replied. In truth, I doubted there was a single person not captivated by Jo, who tonight, looked enchantingly beautiful. I tried to remember it. Everything. Yet it seemed that each moment went by, not wanting to be kept and memorised, until I could hardly trace back to how we got here. Misty droplets clung to my forehead, but I still felt a burning heat on my skin, as I ran over and over again in my mind, the tangle of words I'd held back all this time from Jo.  
I had to tell her.

In the distance, I caught the same notes of music that had lingered in the air at the party. A piano was playing-sharp, quick chords of a broken rhythm to a low hum that followed its song. Jo had stayed quiet, almost as though my own thoughts were loud and stunning enough for her to be lost entirely in my mystery.

Suddenly, the sky broke at last and rain poured over us, rivulets running down the pavement. New York glistened in a blur of gold and silver; window fronts and brilliant vitrines, decorated in clear crystals of water. People were dashing for shelter, but neither of us cared.

“Here,” I drew off my coat and gave it to Jo, who held it over her head, one hand still firmly locked with mine. She was laughing like a child, as I shivered in contrast to the burning rush I'd felt no more than a minute before. Cabs slowed down by the curb, hoping to catch the few lingering tourists who hadn’t managed to find a place to hide, unluckily realising we were in no search of escape. The rain soaked through my clothes, trickling, like a cold sweat down my back, until Jo and I stumbled into the quiet of a narrow walkway off the slick avenue.

Our laughter grew still when the splashes of tires and the city gleam were left behind in their wild splendour for others to relish.

"I wonder how many people that caught off guard," Jo smiled, looking back at the street before leaning into my shoulder as we lingered to a stop. Nervous, I let her fingers slip from between mine and watched her hand fall at her side. She'd shrugged my coat over her shoulders and let her hair grow wet under the rain, not caring as her soft waves framed her flushed cheeks.

"Jo," I breathed her name softly. She brought her gaze up to meet mine and parted her lips in anticipation of what I'd say or do next. She'd already told me, so many times, in her way, the very same thing I waited on. I'd forgotten about time and learned to take its seconds for granted, but she was right here. I had been so blind. There wasn't anyone I wanted more, so I hesitated and at last began. "I..."

A shrill shot broke the rhythmic fall of rain and froze the words on my lips. Jo fell forward against my chest and her breath caught when her body grew heavy in my quick grasp around her waist. "Jo," I said her name in shock of the noise, looking around me. My hands clutched her against the drenched fabric of my coat, but as I ran one arm higher up her back, the wool felt soaked in warm wetness entirely to the core. I drew my arm away, holding her tighter with my other, as she rocked on her feet.

The palm of my hand was stained red.

"Jo!" I exclaimed now in a panic when she collapsed on the ground, my coat slipping from her shoulders and onto the pavement beneath her. She'd been wounded by a bullet once, but this time she was fading quickly from me, on the near edge of falling into unconsciousness. "Jo, can you hear me?"

"Henry," she mouthed my name, her voice breaking through almost as a whisper. "We were so wrong." She moved her head slowly to look at me when I placed a hand under it, hovering on my knees over her.

"About what?" I asked in confusion, fighting my own pain; a stab of weakness in my heart. There was no sign of him, the shooter and in the loneliness, even the loud music that had followed ended abruptly.

"About everything. About us." Jo managed to find the words. "We could have made it together, if we'd tried. We were so close and I want..." Her words broke off, eyelids fighting to stay open.

"No! Jo, don't leave me, please don't leave me alone." I was drowning, air pulled from my lungs like a hole had been drawn through them. They came over me, the same string of flashbacks as every time I died, but this was a different death, more rigid and tearing on every inch of me. It wasn't healed after my return to the surface, but only dragged me into its unbearable trap. When I looked down, I held in my hands, the last remains of my dear wife, Abigail. The changing seasons had hidden her bones, burying them like the secrets she kept for me. She died alone, with no one to hold her and give her comfort in her last moments. More so, I imagined her fear and desperation when she'd seen me lying in her lap all those years ago, beaten in the street and dying. I sensed the same desperation now. It was more than the panic of losing Jo, but in knowing of all the things I never told her. How cruel time had been to me, but there was no blame for its empty passing other than my own.

"Jo," I repeated, but her lips didn't move. I pressed on the wound, where a single bullet cut right through her chest. She was breathing, but each was followed by another, more shallow than the one before. I closed my eyes tightly, wishing everything away, but time. How madly I wished for more time, when the music slowly returned and I heard her over its noise.

“Henry,” Jo whispered, but my own eyes wouldn't open. "Henry." The muffled voice grew louder, though Jo’s breath was fading under my firm press on her chest. "Come back to me. I need you. Henry."

“Jo!” I gasped, my cold hand gripping hers and feeling again, her tight squeeze. The clamour stopped and warm hues of light filtered in between my eyelids.

"Ah," I heard a low, rough voice say as a man rose from a piano bench across the warmly lit room and came closer. "I was thinking you'd make us wait forever." The old man's features were a blur, but my eyes instantly focused on the striking face of her. I let out a deep breath.

"Glad to see you're still here with us," Jo said encouragingly with a grin, but I had a feeling her words would have been entirely different had my son, Abe, not been standing beside her.

"What happened?" I struggled immediately to sit up, the scene of my living room appearing around me. The anxiety that something dangerous had occurred, possibly to expose my secret to Jo, was a rousing thought.

"Hey there," Abe said, ushering me back down on the propped up pillows. My shirt clung to my back from the sweat streaks on my skin. "Fever knocks you out, but not your stiff determination."

"I don't understand; what happened?" I repeated. Jo had subtly let go of my hand after I awoke, but stayed seated on the couch next to me. Glancing down at her hand, I noticed her bare skinned wrist.

“That's what we want to know," Abe paced in front of the sofa. "You were taking a dip in the river." My eyes widened as I looked at Jo, who raised her brows with a hint of a smile. To end up in the river-there was only one reason, but how did I die? I never recalled dying. Abe continued, undoubtedly seeing the panic in my face. "You were in quite a state. Don't you remember?"

My blank stare at both of them encouraged Jo to tell her part. "We were following a lead on the Pierson case. You called me from a building on the south side; said that you'd found the crime scene and the last evidence to pinning him down for it. Only when I came there with backup, you were gone. Next thing I knew, Abe was calling me. Said he'd found you swimming again, but that you weren't yourself and he wanted me to meet you both at the shop." Jo looked no less baffled about everything than I.

In my horror, I lay battling the idea that Jo had seen me die, my only consolation that Abe had found me first and in my state, managed to get me home before Jo arrived. I must have been ill when I resurfaced in the river, like I had been poisoned with something strong enough to make me forget what had killed me.

"Maybe it'll come back to you," Jo said after a pause of silence. "It doesn't matter right now. You're ok." Her hand returned to mine when Abraham stepped away with a grumble. My lack of explanation disenchanted his spirits. Jo leaned towards me with true relief in her soft, hazel eyes. "For a moment, I really thought you were gone."

"Trust me, Jo," I said with a crooked smile. "That's not as simple as it seems." I lay back further again in the pillows. My head was spinning a little and I wanted to rest.

"Oh," Jo said as she rose up from the edge of the couch and looked down at me with a comforting expression. "And Henry, don't worry, I would never leave you." My thoughts stopped with her words as my dream flashed back to me. Amongst the gunfire and Jo's laughter at the party, vaguely, my memories wound back to the empty building I'd traced the case Jo spoke of to. A dull ache in my arm reminded me of the thin syringe that had been pinned into my shoulder just as I knelt over the blood stained carpet, stretched out in the hollow room. When Jo turned her back to me and walked to the kitchen, I drew up the sleeve of my striped shirt. Just below my shoulder bone, a dark bruise circled a red speck on my skin, where the fine tipped needle had entered. It was the first death since that night on the ship, where not all the marks on my body vanished with my death. I couldn't make sense of it now, but there was so much I needed to make clear, as my eyes closed again. Last, I suddenly recalled the black dots, pointed like a taught bow and arrow drawn back to shoot across Jo's wrist. They formed the outline of a swan with its wings extended in flight.

Cygnus in the night sky.

**Author's Note:**

> Did Jo really hear everything Henry said in his dream...oh. 
> 
> I shot out for a more moving trope as I tried to create a sort of dazed sensation throughout the story, giving it almost a sense of confusion, as Henry switches between glimpses of reality and his visions. The heat and rain parallels to Henry's feverishness and sweat building up with the plot kind of fell into place perfectly, until his fever finally breaks with the downpour. There are just a bunch of little allusions around him. As for Henry and Jo, I'm such a mess for them. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this story as much as I loved writing it. Thanks again for reading!


End file.
